Phantom of the Hospital
by Requiem-of-Forsaken-Life
Summary: House AU, Phantom of the Opera plotline.
1. Cast List

_Phantom of the Hospital_

A Phantom of the Opera re-telling using the characters from House MD

**Key Roles:**

Phantom: Greg House (Yes, he still has the limp, the Phantom needs some scarring, after all, right?)

Christine Daae: Allison Cameron (duh)

Raoul de Chagny: Robert Chase (notice similarities in initials?)

Madame Giry: James Wilson (because everyone needs a friend)

Andre and Firmin: Lisa Cuddy and Stacy Warner (Stacy and Lisa have no idea who House is)

Lefevre: Richard Arthur (yes, he's mentioned, but yes, he's retiring)

Meg Giry: Eric Foreman (because he's Cameron's good friend)

Carlotta: Virginia Dare (we need an initial foil)

Joseph Buquet: Sebastian Charles (because I can)

Ubaldo Piangi: Jonathan Dare (because . . . I don't know)

**Some Notes:**

For those of you who watch the show House, the names that are familiar to you will have similar jobs, just tweaked a little to fit into the plot of the Phantom of the Opera storyline, the other people (those that I have created) will be explained.

Richard Arthur: Former dean of medicine, elderly, retiring, knows House (our phantom)

Virginia Dare: A well-known diagnostician, but relies on pat diagnoses, doesn't explore all options. Has lost several patients, but is still famous . . . somehow.

Sebastian Charles: This guy was actually a one-shot character from the episode TB or not TB. I just didn't like the guy, so I figured I'd put him in the role of Buquet so House could kill him.

Jonathan Dare: Virginia's husband. A well-known trial lawyer. Actually good at his job (as compared to his wife)

Lisa Cuddy: Transferring from Princeton General to be the Dean of Medicine at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital

Stacy Warner: Lisa's friend, accompanies the other woman to PPTH as primary legal council.


	2. I:1

Allison Cameron arrived at Princeton Plainsboro early that morning. Her boss, Dr. Virginia Dare, was a stickler for punctuality, and her definition of punctual was to be there before her. Allison thus decided to arrive before almost everyone else so that her boss would find no more problems with her. She arrived in the office, made herself some coffee and looked over the patient notes from yesterday. She knew that there was something else there, something that Dr. Dare had missed when she diagnosed lung cancer, but she couldn't prove it nor could she tell what it was. She decided to take a walk around the hospital hallways to allow herself time to think. As she passed the maintenance stairwell, she heard music piping up from below. She wasn't too young that she didn't recognize the tune: The Who's Baba O'Reilly. She wondered who would be listening to music like that at four-thirty in the morning. Her curiosity piqued, she decided to take some time to investigate the source of the music. She reached her hand into her pocket, feeling the comforting weight of her pepper spray before she made her way downstairs. She followed her ears, tracking the familiar tune and lyrics: _Out here in the fields/I fight for my meals/I get back into my living/I don't need to fight/To prove I'm right/I don't need to be forgiven_ . . . She found her way to the locked grate at the bottom of the staircase, but right now it wasn't locked, nor was it closed. It was open, as was the door beyond it. Tightening her grip on the pepper spray, she walked through the pair of portals and into the room beyond.

Her eyes widened as she took in the expanse of the room that was locked off beneath the hospital. This cavernous expanse was nearly as large as the main floor of the hospital proper. She noticed columns in various locations, presumably to hold up the weight of the building. She walked further in, looking for the source of the music and wondering who exactly could be down here. Finally, as she passed a certain point, the music was cut off, and she could here rhythmic thumping coming from somewhere off to her left. She turned, and was met by an unknown man. As she looked him up and down, lyrics from a song she'd heard recently came unbidden to her mind: _I met a man from New Orleans, wore a half suit with dark blue jeans/Kicked his heels together, winked at me real nice_ . . . She noticed, though, that this man wouldn't be kicking his heels together anytime soon, as he walked with the assistance of a cane, though his clothes seemed to fit the description perfectly. He was taller than she, with stubble on his face and the most piercing blue eyes she'd ever seen. His hair was dark, but he had wings of gray at his temples. He wore Nike Shox shoes, dark blue jeans, and a suit coat over a rumpled button-down sky-blue shirt, which he apparently wore over a black t-shirt of some sort. She noticed that while she was looking at him, his gaze hadn't wavered from her face. Finally, he broke the silence that had gone thick as they stood there. "Ah. Dr. Cameron, I presume. I recognize you from your picture in your employee records. What are you doing down here?"

She looked at him, amazed that he knew her name, and realized that he had asked her a question. "I—I don't . . . that is, I heard . . . how do you have access to my files?" she stammered slightly.

He smirked at her discomfort. "I know everything that goes on in this hospital, Dr. Cameron. Like I know that you arrive extremely early because your boss is some sort of ass with a medical degree bought off of e-bay and a high-class lawyer husband that keeps her from getting sued by the families of those patients that she inadvertently allows to die. I know that you get ignored by her, probably because she doesn't respect you, though I don't know why. I have heard you complain to your friend and colleague Dr. Eric Foreman that your boss makes pat diagnoses and doesn't explore other avenues. I happen to agree with you. Some of your patients that you complain about that live are my work, not hers."

Allison was taken aback at the strange man's comments. "What do you mean, your work?"

"I've often gone up and changed the patient's chart to accommodate new medication. It shows _her_ ineptitude that she doesn't check the charts after making the initial notation."

"But . . . who _are_ you?"

"Me?" he grinned lopsidedly, "I'm the Hospital's resident ghost."

"You're what?"

He chuckled slightly, "You heard me. I haunt this place, making the changes I see necessary, I even make sure that Dr. Arthur knows his place around here."

"Why?"

"Because they wouldn't want me to be up there," he said bitterly as he used his cane to gesture upwards. "People don't want a sick doctor." He looked at his watch. "Oh. You better go. Your boss will be arriving in ten minutes, and it'll take you about that long just to get back to her department." Allison nodded and turned to walk away. She got almost all the way to the door before he spoke again. "One more thing, your patient doesn't have small-cell lung cancer, she has Lupus, which is threatening her lungs. You need a biopsy to confirm, but it'd just be easier to start her on proper treatment." Allison tossed a hurried thanks over her shoulder as she quickened her pace to get back upstairs.

* * *

**Author's Notes:** I understand that there has been some confusion regarding how this story is going to turn out. For the most part, you're just going to have to wait and see while I take creative and artistic liberties with the characters and have a little fun in the process. However, in response to a review I received about my cast list, I thought I'd set the record straight. While House may indeed still have feelings for Stacy, he also has feelings for Allison Cameron, though he's less open about showing them (I will not speculate as to why, too many fanfictions have done that already, and I'll probably end up doing it in my other work, which is titled Lashes and Strokes and is a CSI/CSI:NY/House Crossover as of now). My evidence that he has feelings for her are as follows:  
1. The Date (Love Hurts, first season): Ironically one of the largest pieces of evidence for the fact that he likes her even though he pushed her away rather hard during the dinner. First off, no doctor except for a few exceptional ones, are worth the hassle of a date to get to return to work after they've resigned. Dr. House is the only one at PPTH who is of that caliber. Since she's not at his level, but he agreed to the date anyway . . . that tells us something. Also, he bought her a corsage and took her to a very fancy restaurant. He could have made do with a moderately fancy one and she wouldn't have minded.  
2. The Flinch (Three Stories, first season): As he was attempting to teach the diagnostic class using his own experience with poor diagnostics, no one could come up with the option that he wanted them to do, which was muscle death. When Dr. Cameron came in and spoke up, he flinched. Could he have been surprised? Probably was, but he flinched and didn't have a witty comeback. She caught him out and he didn't try to hide it.  
3. The Sarcasm (Post-Control, first season): After the end of Control, when Cameron had asked him if he liked her, his sarcastic and biting remarks towards her showed a marked increase in frequency and harshness. If you look at all the main characters, you can rate his sarcasm by frequency and intensity. He's pretty bad to Foreman and Cuddy, and post-Control he's quite harsh to Chase. However, he's at his harshest to Wilson, who everyone knows is House's friend, who House obviously cares about (especially since House allows Wilson to crash at his place when his wife throws him out). Thus, logically, you can measure how much House likes the person by how nasty he is with his verbal remarks. He's at his second-harshest to Cameron, thus he likes her particularly well (if this logic sounds like it's based off of immaturity, well, it's House).

Ohter notes: Ummmm . . . as to that question about whether Cameron will end up with Chase, did you read what character labels I put on the primary entry?  
The song lyrics used came from the Who's _Baba O'Reilly_ and Scott Stapp's _Justify_  



	3. I:2

House watched appraisingly as the young Allison Cameron turned and walked away. She was definitely attractive. _She wears a coat of colors/loved by some, feared by others/she's immortalized/in young men's eyes . . ._ He shook his head, attempting to banish such thoughts from his mind and failing. He decided that he'd help her out. She was extremely intelligent, just lacking in the confidence category. He turned back to his bookcase deciding what he was going to read today. Perhaps Leroux . . .

* * *

Allison walked into the diagnostics department with only a few minutes to spare before her boss walked in. Her friend and colleague Eric Foreman was already sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee and working on a crossword puzzle. He looked up as she entered the conference room and raised his eyebrows at her. "Where have you been? I knew you were here because you made fresh coffee and your laptop is on the table, but you weren't." 

"I was just up on the roof, thinking and getting some air."

"You sound troubled."

"I think Dr. Dare's diagnosis is wrong."

"What, again?"

"Yeah. I don't think Ms. Ellison has small-cell lung cancer. I think she has lupus that has started threatening her lungs a little earlier than it ought to."

"You know, that fits, except she already wrote the diagnosis on her chart with treatment recommendations. You would need to get her permission to perform the biopsy you need to confirm the diagnosis."

"Not necessarily."

"Cameron, you need a department head's signature to perform an invasive test like a lung biopsy."

"True, but it doesn't _have_ to be this department."

"Wait a second . . . you're not thinking of talking to Dr. Wilson about this, are you?"

"Why not? Ms. Ellison's going to be transferred to Wilson's care, so I'll just ask Wilson for permission to perform the test."

"Dr. Dare's going to be pissed."

"That's too bad, Ms. Ellison doesn't need to die due to doctor incompetence." Both doctors looked up as their superior, Dr. Dare, breezed into the conference room to put down her bag and make herself some herbal tea.

"Good morning Dr. Foreman, Dr. Cameron," she spoke perfunctorily as she stirred the tea bag in the hot water. "Do we have any new patients?"

"No," Dr. Foreman answered her, "though you need to talk to Wilson about transferring our current patient to his care."

"I'll do that after the staff meeting this morning. Dr. Arthur called one for all department heads in half an hour," with that, she walked into her office to drop off her jacket and bag before she headed back downstairs.

Cameron looked at Foreman out of the corner of her eye as Dr. Dare left the office to head to the stairs. Foreman, still looking down at his crossword puzzle, finally spoke up, startling her, "Want to tell me what's really bothering you?"

"How did you . . . ?"

"Cameron, please. Give me a little more credit than that. I'm your friend and colleague. I've worked with you and spoke with you for a year now. Hell, we've gotten drunk together and I've crashed at your apartment because it's closer to the hospital than mine. I think I'd be able to tell if you were nervous about something."

"Okay . . . well, you know that grated door at the bottom of the east wing staircase?"

"The one that I don't think anyone has a key for? Yeah."

"You ever wonder what's back there?"

"Yeah, but I've never been able to get in. None of the maintenance guys I've spoken to know what's there."

"I found out what's down there, Foreman."

"What? When?"

"This morning. I couldn't sleep and my apartment at 4:00 in the morning is exceedingly boring, so I came here. I had to go up to the roof to think and gather myself, because this wordless tune is playing through my mind and it's keeping me from being polite to the boss. Anyways, I was up there, standing alone, looking out at the lights of Princeton, when I heard strange music. I knew that it wasn't the tune in my mind, it was entirely different. It was Baba O'Reilly by The Who. So I followed the sounds, thinking I'd find one of the maintenance guys or a couple orderlies or something. Instead, I found that grate and door unlocked and open. Inside, there was this large chamber with columns everywhere, probably to take the weight of the hospital above. I was walking through this chamber when I heard this strange thumping noise coming from my left, and all of a sudden there was this man, dressed in blue jeans, Nike Shox," at that Foreman looked down at his own feet, and Cameron laughed, "yes, just like the ones you're wearing today. He was also wearing a suit jacket over a dress shirt and he walked with a cane."

"Did he give you his name?"

"No, he introduced himself as the hospital's resident ghost. He said that people don't want a sick doctor."

"That's true. I don't want healthy patients."

"He seemed to know a lot, like my name, your name, our boss' name, and the dean's name. Also, he claimed to have saved a few of the patients that survived past Dr. Dare's ministrations."

"We don't know if that's true," Foreman's face looked troubled.

"I did say he had claimed to be their savior. Anyway, I'm wondering who he is."

"Be careful, Cameron. He sounds like someone you shouldn't mess with.

* * *

_Author's note: I challenge anyone to guess what music is working its way through Cameron's mind in this chapter. I will give you one clue, but I only will recognize your first guess, I want to see how many get this right. The clue is: the song is from the musical Wicked.  
_


End file.
